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Radical contingency

Description:

This state occurs when a human being experiences the mystery of death as the final reality of every life. Today's world is alive with images that communicate this reality. Just a few include: the nuclear threat; the daily news of famine, airline hi-jacking, civil wars, terrorist bombings; and advanced medical techniques that sometimes work and sometimes don't. Whatever occasions this state, everyone has those moments in which his own death becomes a reality to him. A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe, that is fear and fascination, accompanied by a unique emotional tone. One experiences the shock and fear of realizing that death is the absolute, irreversible finality; the fear of not knowing how, when or where it will occur, just that it will. This is accompanied by a kind of amazement that one is, in that moment, still alive - that it is not me this time. This is the fascination which compels one to watch death occur at the same moment as one is tingling with one's own liveliness. During such a moment, one decides on present awareness of one's death; and more than that, to carry on living in and through such a moment. The residue of these events is a sense of not wanting to forget the reality of death that has been experienced, at the same time as a deeper appreciation for life, alive in a new way to the possibilities and options open to one.

Context:

This state is number 1 in the ICA [Other World in the midst of this World].<

About the Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential is a collaboration between UIA and Mankind 2000, started in 1972. It is the result of an ambitious effort to collect and present information on the problems with which humanity is confronted, as well as the challenges such problems pose to concept formation, values and development strategies. Problems included are those identified in international periodicals but especially in the documents of some 60,000 international non-profit organizations, profiled in the Yearbook of International Organizations.

The Encyclopedia includes problems which such groups choose to perceive and act upon, whether or not their existence is denied by others claiming greater expertise. Indeed such claims and counter-claims figure in many of the problem descriptions in order to reflect the often paralyzing dynamics of international debate. In the light of the interdependence demonstrated among world problems in every sector, emphasis is placed on the need for approaches which are sufficiently complex to encompass the factions, conflicts and rival worldviews that undermine collective initiative towards a promising future.

Non-profit, apolitical, independent, and non-governmental in nature, the UIA has been a pioneer in the research, monitoring and provision of information on international organizations, international associations and their global challenges since 1907.